Our Neighbors are Our Makers: Young God’s Willingness to be Mean

When God creates the world in the first chapter of Genesis for seven days he always finds afterwards that he makes good. God famously says, “‘Let there be light’; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good;” (Genesis 1:3-4).

God creates light, something that the reader immediately pictures as good. Then the reader finds that God is not guided by divinity, but by guess and check; he creates with uncertainty.

This uncertainty that a person may attribute to God occurs early in The Bible, in the first four lines. Unlike the way the New Testament portrays God, as a perfect, divine deity, the Old Testament depicts him as extra ordinary, perfectly human.

In the case of The Bible, God receives many faces. He acts as a caring, uncertain ruler at some points, but a brutal destroyer when he decides to send in the floods to kill all flesh, and as he savours the smell of the burning blood and carcasses that Noah and his descendants sacrifice to him.

These several faces allowed for the universality of this God thousands of years ago. He related to the people. The people of the time looked at him as they did their wealthy neighbor, which God tells us later, matches what he wants of us.

Cain Is Not Able: What Happens Between Siblings, Doesn’t Stay Between Siblings

While reading Genesis chapter four about the dealings of the direct descendants of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel’s interactions play out. God asks Cain, “‘Where is your brother Abel?’”, and Cain replies, “‘I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper?’”

Cain trying to hide his murder of Abel relates to the way brothers and siblings still interact today (but in much less dramatic ways). An older brother may pick on the younger brother and then act like nothing happened.

Cain says that he doesn’t watch over his brother all the time. His philosophy has both pros and cons attached to it. Without the guidance of an elder, a person cannot grow and develop. The siblings can relate the most with each other because of the minimal age difference between them, and they stay with one another for their entire lives.

In thinking that he shouldn’t hover over his brother because he may keep his brother from interacting fully with the outside world, Cain plays as the innocent one. You learn best by making mistakes and the “keeping” of someone could actually injure someone’s future.

The middle ground remains the best route; you must make sure that people don’t make big mistakes that can hurt themselves, but you must also let them attempt living in the world themselves. Cain took the wrong route completely, but we have learned the lessons of the past and won’t make the big mistakes again, just as we should have.